Product Description

Hailed as a masterpiece from the moment of its first publication, "Revolutionary Road" is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple whose empty suburban life is held together by the dream that greatness is only just round the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their hopes and ideals, betraying in the end not only each other, but their own best selves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #946 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Originally published in 1961 to great critical acclaim, Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road subsequently fell into obscurity in the UK, only to be rediscovered in a new edition published in 2001. Its rejuvenation is due in large part to its continuing emotional and moral resonance for an early 21st-century readership. April and Frank Wheeler are a young, ostensibly thriving couple living with their two children in a prosperous Connecticut suburb in the mid-1950s. However, like the characters in John Updike's similarly themed Couples, the self-assured exterior masks a creeping frustration at their inability to feel fulfilled or happy in their relationships or careers. Frank is mired in a well-paid but boring office job and April is a housewife still mourning the demise of her hoped-for acting career. Determined to identify themselves as superior to the mediocre sprawl of suburbanites who surround them, they decide to move to France where they will be better able to develop their true artistic sensibilities, free of the consumerist demands of capitalist America. However, as their relationship deteriorates into an endless cycle of squabbling, jealousy and recriminations, their trip and their dreams of self-fulfilment are thrown into jeopardy. Yates's incisive, moving and often very funny prose weaves a tale that is at once a fascinating period piece and a prescient anticipation of the way we live now. Many of the cultural motifs now seem quaintly dated--the early evening cocktails, Frank's illicit lunch breaks with his secretary, the way Frank isn't averse to knocking April around when she speaks out of turn all seem to belong to a different world--and yet the quiet desperation at thwarted dreams reverberates as much now as it did 40 years ago. Like F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, this novel conveys, with brilliant erudition, the poverty at the soul of many wealthy Americans and the exacting cost of chasing the American Dream. --Jane Morris

Esquire
`keenly observed 1961 critique of Fifties suburban life'

Review
`This is a devastatingly powerful novel; harrowing, like most of Yates's oeuvre, but fascinating throughout.'

Customer Reviews

How come I only just heard about this fantastic book?
How come I only just heard about this fantastic book? Set in 1950s suburban Connecticut, it tells the story of the less than idyllic relationship of Frank and April Wheeler. Although an onlooker may see them as an ideal couple in an ideal situation they both have layers and layers of dissatisfaction which come to the surface as their marriage crumbles.

The book was written in 1961 and seems to encapsulate all that we have come to associate with the previous decade. April appears willing to give up any pretence of a career to look after house and children while Frank goes each day to his "boring" office job (but he manages to find time for an affair with a secretary). Everyone drinks and smokes to excess - even in pregnancy. Frank's boss declares electronic computers to be the coming thing.....

Although both Frank and his neighbour Shep sometimes reflect on their time in the army during the war very little of the wider outside world creeps into the empty surburban world of Frank and April and their small circle of acquaintances. April comes up with a plan to move the family to France believing this will give Frank a fresh impetus to "find himself" but from the start you wonder if this will never happen.

Revolutionary Road is powerfully written and draws you into the lives of the Wheelers and their neighbours the Campbells and the Givings. It has some darkly comic moments and many flashes of brilliance. Yes, an American classic.

Did the creators of Mad Men (US TV series) get some of their inspiration from this book?

Quite simply, one of the best American novels of the 20th century
An astoundingly well told tale of a couple trying to live happy lives in 50s America. Devastatingly accurate its portrayals of vanity, manhood and ambition as well as deceit, depression and the absurd faces we put on situations attributed to being part of 'normal life'. This is one of the best, most potent American books I've read and it's not hard to see why it was regarded as a classic from the moment it was published.

A Great Novel, a Great Writer...
I first came across this novel on my English Lit degree course, on a module on alienation and having read some of the other required reading, i had a 'feeling' i would enjoy this novel. Well... i was not disappointed. It really is one of the best novels i have ever read. I have read it twice now and know i will come back to it again in the future.

It is beautifully crafted, sometimes touching, dark, occasionally funny but incredibly sad. The final chapters are some of the best i have read.

Yates is a great but undervalued writer... more people should read this amazing book.